How to Have a Better Relationship to Your Skin

At Kaya KoCo, we believe that your emotional relationship to your skin comes before any product you use. What are your first thoughts when you think about your skin? Does your mind immediately go to your perceived imperfections? Or do you think of your skin adoringly? Whatever your thoughts are, acknowledge them, and see if that's a relationship to your skin that you want to prolong. 

How Beliefs about Yourself Manifests on Your Skin

We are all intrinsically worthy of love. Anyone's love, but most importantly, our own love. But most of us grow up in environments that make us believe that we need to do or be something else in order to be worthy. That we need to look a certain way, or be successful in a certain way—that we need to constantly improve ourselves, or else. And these limiting beliefs affect the way we treat ourselves, including our skin.

Have you had an experience where you didn't like the way you looked, and bought a bunch of products to "fix" your appearance, and ended up with the worst skin breakout? It's because the belief that "I'm not attractive" was still there, manifesting the result where you were still unattractive, no matter the actions. You can't dislike your way into the version of yourself that you love. You need to start from accepting the way you are today, and love it if you can, without beating yourself up.

Emotions are Chemical Compounds

We tend to believe that our emotions are abstract concepts without physical reality. But in fact, our emotions are nothing but how our body translates certain chemical compounds, such as cortisol—the stress hormone—or oxytocin—the love hormone—et cetera. And these emotional chemical compounds have real impact on our skin. Oxytocin makes your skin glow and healthier. Cortisol breaks down collagen, increases moisture loss, triggers inflammation, slows cell turnover and increases sebum production.

Some scientists believe that aging is not a natural phenomenon, but rather, a mere accumulation of impact of cortisol across time. While we at Kaya KoCo embrace the natural signs of aging, we think it's also valuable to reflect on what our skin is trying to tell us about our stress level. 

Love Your Skin Unconditionally

But it also doesn't mean that if you see a wrinkle on your skin, you need to blame yourself for all the stress that you had. Maybe you got that wrinkle from smiling so much. Or maybe you did get it through stressful situations. But we don't want to undermine your unique life journey—it made you who you are today, and who you are today is great. 

It also doesn't mean that you need to force yourself to love your skin immediately, when you're going through the worst breakout in your life or when the society taught you to dislike your own skin color. You can't immediately go from hate to love—if it were that easy, we would all love ourselves. 

We can start from accepting where we are, instead of fighting our current state, if loving feels too much of a stretch right now. We don't have to pretend to love our acnes or wrinkles, but we can simply let them be for a moment, and stop the struggle. This would already give you a breath of fresh air that you needed.

Then we can change the way we talk to ourselves. How about, when you're using your skin care products, you remind yourself how much you're worthy of your own time and attention? How much you're worthy of being pampered and being given good skincare? If you're starting to think that maybe this is too self-indulgent, tell it to politely shut its mouth. You don't need any justifications for spending time and money on yourself. Self-care doesn't have to be earned; it's something you intrinsically deserve. And if anyone calls you selfish for that, just quietly wish them that they would feel unconditionally worthy of their own time and attention too. 

We hope this blog article was helpful in starting a better relationship to your skin and yourself. It maybe a journey of a lifetime, but you are worth your lifetime. And we hope that we could be a loving company on your journey.

Love,